Before noon on the third day, after crossing more broken country which was cut up with many dry washes through which the wagons wallowed in imminent danger of being wrecked, the caravan came to the Cimarron, and found it dry. Cries of consternation broke out on all sides, and were followed by dogmatic denials that it was the Cimarron. The arguments waged hotly between those who were making their first trip and the more experienced traders. Who ever heard of a dry river? This was only another dry wash, wider and longer, but only a wash. The Cimarron lay beyond. Here ensued the most serious of all the disagreements, for a large number of the members of the caravans scoffed when told that by following the plain wagon tracks they would soon reach the lower spring of the Cimarron. How could the spring be found when this was not the Cimarron River at all? They knew that when Woodson had been elected at Council Grove that he was not fitted to take charge of the caravan; that his officers were incompetent, and now they were sure of it. Anyone with sense could see that this was no river. If it were a river, then the prairie-dog mounds they had just passed were mountains. Here was a situation which needed more than tact, for if the doubting minority was allowed to follow their inclinations they might find a terrible death at the end of their wanderings. Dogmatic and pugnacious, almost hysterical in their repeated determination to go on and find the river, they must be saved, by force if necessary, from themselves. They would not listen to the plea that they go on a few miles and let the spring prove them to be wrong; there was no spring to be found in a few miles if it was located on the Cimarron. Woodson and others argued, begged, and at last threatened. They pointed out that they were familiar with every foot of the trail from one end to the other; that they had made the journey year after year, spring and fall; that here was the deeply cut trail, pointing out the way to water, where other wagons had rolled before them, following the plain and unequivocal tracks. The debate was growing noisier and more heated when Tom stepped forward and raised his hand.